How to design a library that makes kids want to read - Michael Bierut
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0:11 So there's this thing called the law of
unintended consequences. I thought it was just like a saying, but
it actually exists, I guess. There's, like, academic papers about it. And
I'm a designer. I don't like unintended consequences. People
hire me because they have consequences that they really intend, and
what they intend is for me to help them achieve those consequences. So I
live in fear of unintended consequences. And
so this is a story about consequences intended and unintended.
0:43 I got called by an organization called Robin Hood to do
a favor for them. Robin Hood is based in New York, a wonderful
philanthropic organization that does what it says in the name. They
take from rich people, give it to poor people. In
this case, what they wanted to benefit was the New York City school system, a
huge enterprise that educates more than a million students at a time, and
in buildings that are like this one,
old buildings, big buildings, drafty
buildings, sometimes buildings that are in disrepair, certainly
buildings that could use a renovation. Robin
Hood had this ambition to improve these buildings in some way, but
what they realized was to fix the buildings would be too expensive and
impractical. So instead they tried to figure out what one room
they could go into in each of these buildings, in as many buildings
that they could, and fix that one room so
that they could improve the lives of the children inside as
they were studying. And what they came up with was the school
library, and they came up with this idea called the
Library Initiative. All the students have to pass through the
library. That's where the books are. That's
where the heart and soul of the school is. So
let's fix these libraries.
1:52 So they did this wonderful thing where they
brought in first 10, then 20, then more architects, each
one of whom was assigned a library to rethink what a library was. They
trained special librarians. So they started this mighty enterprise to
reform public schools by improving these libraries. Then
they called me up and they said, "Could you make a little
contribution?" I said, "Sure, what do you want me to
do?" And they said, "Well, we want you to be the
graphic designer in charge of the whole thing." And
so I thought, I know what that means. That means I get to design a logo. I
know how to design that. I design logos. That's
what people come to me for. So OK, let's design a logo for this thing. Easy
to do, actually, compared with architecture and
being a librarian. Just do a logo, make a contribution, and then
you're out, and you feel really good about yourself. And
I'm a great guy and I like to feel good about myself when I do these favors.
2:40 So I thought, let's overdeliver. I'm
going to give you three logos, all based on this one idea. So
you have three options, pick any of the three. They're
all great, I said. So the basic idea was these would be new school
libraries for New York schools, and
so the idea is that it's a new thing, a new idea that needs a new name. What I
wanted to do was dispel the idea that these were musty old libraries, the
kind of places that everyone is bored with, you
know, not your grandparents' library. Don't
worry about that at all. This is going to this new, exciting thing, not a
boring library.
3:13 So option number one: so
instead of thinking of it as a library, think
of it as a place where it is like: do talk, do make loud noises. Right?
So no shushing, it's like a shush-free zone. We're
going to call it the Reading Room.
3:27 That was option number one. OK, option number
two. Option number two was, wait for it, OWL. I'll
meet you at OWL. I'm getting my book from the OWL. Meet you after
school down at OWL. I like that, right? Now, what does OWL stand for? Well,
it could be One World Library, or it could be Open. Wonder. Learn. Or it
could be — and I figure librarians could figure out other things it could be because
they know about words. So other things, right? And
then look at this. It's like the eye of the owl. This
is irresistible in my opinion.
3:58 But there's even another idea. Option
number three. Option number three was based actually on
language. It's the idea that "read" is the past
tense of "read," and they're both spelled the same way. So
why don't we call this place The Red Zone? I'll
meet you at the Red Zone. Are you Red? Get Red. I'm
well Red.
4:18 (Laughter)
4:19 I really loved this idea, and I
somehow was not focused on the idea that librarians as a class are sort of interested
in spelling and I don't know.
4:29 (Laughter)
4:30 But sometimes cleverness is more important than
spelling, and I thought this would be one of those
instances. So usually when I make these presentations I say
there's just one question and the question should be, "How
can I thank you, Mike?" But in this case, the question was more like, "Um,
are you kidding?" Because, they said, the
premise of all this work was that kids were bored with old libraries,
musty old libraries. They were tired of them. And
instead, they said, these kids have never really seen a library. The
school libraries in these schools are really so dilapidated, if they're there at
all, that they haven't bored anyone. They
haven't even been there to bore anyone at all. So
the idea was, just forget about giving it a new name. Just
call it, one last try, a library. Right? OK. So I
thought, OK, give it a little oomph?
Exclamation point? Then
— this is because I'm clever — move that into the "i," make
it red, and there you have it, the Library Initiative. So I
thought, mission accomplished, there's your logo. So
what's interesting about this logo, an unintended consequence, was
that it turned out that they didn't really even need my design because
you could type it any font, you could write it by hand, and
when they started sending emails around, they
just would use Shift and 1, they'd get their own logo just right out of the
thing. And I thought, well, that's fine. Feel
free to use that logo. And then I embarked on the real rollout of this
thing — working with every one of the architects to put
this logo on the front door of their own library. Right?
6:01 So here's the big rollout. Basically
I'd work with different architects. First Robin Hood was my client. Now these
architects were my client. I'd say, "Here's your logo. Put it on the
door." "Here's your logo. Put it on both
doors." "Here's your logo. Put it off to the
side." "Here's your logo repeated all over to the
top." So everything was going swimmingly. I
just was saying, "Here's your logo. Here's your logo."
6:21 Then I got a call from one of the architects, a guy
named Richard Lewis, and he says, "I've got a problem. You're
the graphics guy. Can you solve it?" And I
said, OK, sure." And he said, "The problem is that there's a
space between the shelf and the ceiling." So
that sounds like an architectural issue to me, not a
graphic design issue, so I'm, "Go on." And
Richard says, "Well, the top shelf has to be low enough for
the kid to reach it, but I'm in a big old building, and the ceilings
are really high, so actually I've got all this space up there and I
need something like a mural." And I'm like, "Whoa, you know, I'm a logo
designer. I'm not Diego Rivera or something. I'm
not a muralist." And so he said, "But can't you think of
anything?" So I said, "OK, what if we just took pictures
of the kids in the school and just put them around the top of the thing, and
maybe that could work." And my wife is a photographer, and I
said, "Dorothy, there's no budget, can
you come to this school in east New York, take these pictures?" And
she did, and if you go in Richard's library, which
is one of the first that opened, it has this glorious frieze of, like, the heroes
of the school, oversized, looking down into
the little dollhouse of the real library, right? And
the kids were great, hand-selected by the principals and
the librarian. It just kind of created this heroic atmosphere in
this library, this very dignified setting below and the joy of
the children above.
7:40 So naturally all the other librarians in the
other schools see this and they said, well, we want murals too. And
I'm like, OK. So then I think, well, it can't be the same mural
every time, so Dorothy did another one, and then she did
another one, but then we needed more help, so I
called an illustrator I knew named Lynn Pauley, and Lynn
did these beautiful paintings of the kids. Then
I called a guy named Charles Wilkin at a place called Automatic Design. He
did these amazing collages. We had Rafael Esquer do
these great silhouettes. He would work with the kids, asking for words, and then
based on those prompts, come up with this little, delirious kind of
constellation of silhouettes of things that are in books. Peter
Arkle interviewed the kids and had them talk about their favorite books and
he put their testimony as a frieze up there. Stefan
Sagmeister worked with Yuko Shimizu and they did this amazing manga-style statement, "Everyone
who is honest is interesting," that goes all the way around. Christoph
Niemann, brilliant illustrator, did a whole series of things where
he embedded books into the faces and characters and
images and places that you find in the books. And
then even Maira Kalman did this amazing cryptic installation of objects
and words that kind of go all around and will fascinate
students for as long as it's up there.
8:56 So this was really satisfying, and
basically my role here was reading a series of dimensions to these artists, and I
would say, "Three feet by 15 feet, whatever you want. Let
me know if you have any problem with that." And
they would go and install these. It just was the greatest thing.
9:13 But the greatest thing, actually, was — Every
once in a while, I'd get, like, an invitation in the mail made of
construction paper, and it would say, "You are invited to the
opening of our new library." So you'd go to the library, say, you'd go to
PS10, and you'd go inside. There'd
be balloons, there'd be a student ambassador, there'd
be speeches that were read, poetry that was written specifically for the
opening, dignitaries would present people with
certificates, and the whole thing was just a delirious, fun
party. So I loved going to these things. I
would stand there dressed like this, obviously not belonging, and
someone would say, "What are you doing here, mister?" And
I'd say, "Well, I'm part of the team that designed this place." And
they'd said, "You do these shelves?" And I
said, "No." "You took the pictures up above." "No." "Well,
what did you do?" "You know when you came in? The sign over
the door?" "The sign that says library?"
10:02 (Laughter)
10:03 "Yeah, I did that!" And
then they'd sort of go, "OK. Nice work if you can get it." So it
was so satisfying going to these little openings despite
the fact that I was kind of largely ignored or humiliated, but
it was actually fun going to the openings, so I
decided that I wanted to get the people in my office who
had worked on these projects, get the illustrators and photographers, and I
said, why don't we rent a van and drive around the five boroughs of New York and
see how many we could hit at one time. And eventually
there were going to be 60 of these libraries, so we
probably got to see maybe half a dozen in one long day. And
the best thing of all was meeting these librarians who
kind of were running these, took possession of these places like
their private stage upon which they were invited to
mesmerize their students and bring the books to life, and
it was just this really exciting experience for
all of us to actually see these things in action. So we
spent a long day doing this and we were in the very last library. It
was still winter, because it got dark early, and
the librarian says, "I'm about to close down. So really nice
having you here. Hey, wait a second, do you want to see how I turn
off the lights?" I'm like, "OK." And
she said, "I have this special way that I do it." And
then she showed me. What she did was she turned out every light one
by one by one by one, and the last light she left on was
the light that illuminated the kids' faces, and
she said, "That's the last light I turn off every night, because
I like to remind myself why I come to work."
11:30 So when I started this whole thing, remember,
it was just about designing that logo and
being clever, come up with a new name? The
unintended consequence here, which I would like to take credit for and
like to think I can think through the experience to that extent, but I
can't. I was just focused on a foot ahead of me, as far
as I could reach with my own hands. Instead, way off in the distance was a
librarian who was going to find the chain of consequences that
we had set in motion, a source of inspiration so
that she in this case could do her work really well. 40,000
kids a year are affected by these libraries. They've
been happening for more than 10 years now, so
those librarians have kind of turned on a generation of children to books and
so it's been a thrill to find out that sometimes unintended consequences are the
best consequences.
12:19 Thank you very much.
12:20 (Applause)
Regards
Pralhad Jadhav
Senior Manager @
Knowledge Repository
Khaitan
& Co
Upcoming
Event | MANLIBNET 17th
Annual International Conference on 15-16 September 2017 at Jaipuria, Noida,
India
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